Nelson Algren - The New Black Mask Quarterly (№ 1)

There was a softer growl, a kind of gruff whimper. Approval. I lay perfectly still for a time, scarcely breathing — and it is easy to stop breathing when one is scared stiff. Then, without moving my head, I slanted my eyes to the side. Directly into the unblinking stare of a huge German Shepherd.

His massive snout was only inches from my face. The grayish-black lips were curled back from his teeth. And I remember thinking peevishly that he had too many, that no dog could possibly have this many teeth. Our eyes met and held for a moment. But dogs, members of the wolf family, regard such an encounter as a challenge. And a rising growl jerked my gaze back to the ceiling.

There was that gruff whimper again. Approval. Then, nothing.

Nothing but the wild beating of my heart. That, and the dog’s warm breath on my face as he stood poised so close to me. Ready to move — decisively — if I should move.

“Watch!” He had been given an order. And until that order was revoked, he would stay where he was. Which would force me to stay where I was... lying very, very still. As, of course, I would not be able to do much longer.

Any moment now, I would start yawning. Accumulated tension would force me to. At almost any moment my legs would jerk, an involuntary and uncontrollable reaction to prolonged inactivity. And when that happened...

The dog growled again. Differently from any of his previous growls. With the sound was another, the brief thud-thud of a tail against the carpet.

A friend — or perhaps an acquaintance — had come into the room. I was afraid to move my head, as the intruder was obviously aware, so she came around to the foot of the bed where I could see her without moving.

It was the mulatto slattern who sat behind the desk in the dimly lit lobby. The manager of the place, I had always assumed. The mock concern on her face didn’t quite conceal her malicious grin; there was spiteful laughter in her nominally servile voice.

“Well, jus’ looky heah, now! Mistah Britton Rain-star with a doggy in his room! How you doin’, Mistah High-an’-mighty Rainstar?”

“G-goddamn you—!” I choked with fear and fury. “Get that dog out of here! Call him off!”

She said, “Shuh, man.” She wasn’t tellin’ that dog to do nothin’. “Ain’t my houn’. Wouldn’t pay no attention to me, ’ceptin’ maybe to bite my fat ass.”

“But goddamn it—! I’m sorry,” I said. “Please forgive me for being rude. If you’ll get Manny — Miss Aloe, please. Tell her I’m very sorry, and I’m sure I can straighten everything out if she’ll just — just—”

She broke in with another “Shuh” of disdain. “Where I get Miss Manny, anyways? Ain’t seen Miss Manny since you-all come in t’day.”

“I think she’s in the bathroom, the one on this floor. She’s got to be here somewhere. Now, please—!”

“Huh- uh ! Sure ain’t callin’ her out of no bathroom. Not me, no, sir! Miss Manny wouldn’t like that a-tall!”

“B-but—” I hesitated helplessly. “Call the police then. Please! And for God’s sake, hurry!”

“Call the p’lice? Here? Not a chance, Mistah Rainstar. No, siree! Miss Manny sho’ wouldn’t like that!”

“To hell with what she likes! What’s it to you, anyway? Why, goddamn it to hell—”

“Jus’ plenty t’me what she likes. Miss Manny my boss. That’s right, Mistah Rainstar.” She beamed at me falsely. “Miss Manny bought this place right after you-all started comin’ here. Reckon she liked it real well.”

She was lying. She had to be lying.

She wasn’t lying.

She laughed softly, and turned to go. “You lookin’ kinda peak-id, Mistah Rainstar. Reckon I better let you get some rest.”

“Don’t,” I begged. “Don’t do this to me. If you can’t do anything else, at least stay with me. I can’t move, and I can’t lie still any longer, and — and that dog will kill me! He’s trained to kill! S-so — so — please—” I gulped, swallowing an incipient sob, blinking the tears from my eyes. “Stay with me. Please stay until Miss Manny comes back.”

My eyes cleared.

The woman was gone. Moved out of my line of vision. I started to turn my head, and the dog warned me to desist. Then, from somewhere near the door, the woman spoke again.

“Just stay until Miss Manny come back? That’s what you said, Mistah Rainstar?”

“Yes, please. Just until then.”

“But what if she don’ come back? What about that, Mistah Rainstar?”

An ugly laugh, then. A laugh of mean merriment. And then she was gone. Closing the door firmly this time.

And locking it.

The terror had begun three months before.

It began at three o’clock in the morning with Mrs. Olmstead shaking me into wakefulness.

Mrs. Olmstead is my housekeeper, insofar as I have one. An old age pensioner, she occupies a downstairs bedroom in what, in better times, was called the Rainstar Mansion. She does little else but occupy it, very little in the way of housekeeping. But, fortunately, I require little, and necessarily pay little. So one hand washes the other.

She wasn’t a very bright woman at best, and she was far from her best at three in the morning. But I gathered from her babbling and gesturing that there was an emergency somewhere below, so I pulled on some clothes over my pajamas and hurried downstairs.

A Mr. Jason was waiting for me, a stout apoplectic-looking man who was dressed pretty much as I was. He snapped out that he just couldn’t have this sort of thing, y’know. It was a goddamn imposition, and I had a hell of a lot of guts giving out his phone number. And so forth and so on.

“Now, look,” I said, finally managing to break in on him. “Listen to me. I didn’t give out your number to anyone. I don’t know what the hell it is, for Christ’s sake, and I don’t want to know. And I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah? Y’don’t, huh?” He seemed somewhat mollified. “Well. Better hurry up. Fellow said it was an emergency; matter of life and death.”

He lived in an elaborate summer home about three miles from mine, in an area that was still very good. He stopped his car under the porte-cochere, and preceded me into the entrance hall; then withdrew a few feet while I picked up the telephone.

I couldn’t think who would be making a call to me under such circumstances. There just wasn’t anyone. No one at the Foundation would do it. Except for the check which they sent me monthly, I had virtually no contact with the Hemisphere Foundation. As for Constance, my wife, now a resident, an apparently permanent one, at her father’s home in the midwest...

Constance had no reason to call. Except for being maimed and crippled, Constance was in quite good health. She would doubtless die in bed... thirty or forty years from now... sweetly smiling her forgiveness for the accident I had caused.

So she would not call, and her father would not. Conversation with me was something he did his best to avoid. Oh, he had been scrupulously fair, far more than I would have been in his place. He had publicly exonerated me of blame, stoutly maintaining to the authorities that there was no real evidence pointing to my culpability. But without saying so, he had let me know that he would be just as happy without my company or conversation.

So...?

“Yes?” I spoke into the phone. “Britton Rainstar, here.”

“Rainstar” — a husky semi-whisper, a disguised voice. “Get this, you deadbeat fuck-off. Pay up or you’ll die cryin’. Pay up or else.”

“Huh! Wh-aat?” I almost dropped the phone. “What — who is this?”

“I kid you not, Rainstar. Decorate the deck, or you’ll be trailing turds from here to Texas.”